138 
The following discussion took place : 
Mr. PowELtt—We have been asking for the last three 
or four months to get an opinion as to coal countries, 
and the people who are running this water into the 
streams, and whether it would be advisable for us to 
make a test case against one or more of these companies. 
But up to this time I cannot get any official opinion. I[ 
was invited by this society to prepare a paper on the 
subject, but could not get the data together to do so as 
quickly as I would like to. It has got to be one of the 
most important questions. It appears in certain coun- 
ties north of us here that there has been a waste of coal 
dust, possibly for years—fifty years. Somebody devises 
a patent to wash this coal dust out, pass water through 
it, and selling it for fifty or sixty cents per ton right on 
the ground. We get all the water and they get all this 
cheap coal. It goes further than that: I can name a 
dam near Harrisburg where sand diggers are digging fine 
coal out of the bottom of the river. It not only keeps 
the water back, but it is destroying all the food that the 
large fish live on. Possibly for two or three or four 
hundred yards from shore, the bottom of this river is 
covered with this coal dust. It is going to be an import- 
ant question; I have had a number of letters from other 
States in regard to it. 

